Hank Willis Thomas Will you fly or will you vanish (dragon), 2018 Multimedia quilt including sports jerseys Work: 94.6 x 150 cm
Employing the visual language of mass media, and appropriating symbols and images from popular culture, Hank Willis Thomas questions established definitions and positions with regards to personal identity and the narrative of race.
The work, Will you fly or will you vanish (dragon), is a quilt made with football jerseys. The work references both the function and aesthetics of the Asafo flags, made by the Fante people of Ghana. At the height of colonialism and the slave trade, the flags were used to deliver messages of resistance between colonised peoples.
In a 2018 interview with ÌMỌ̀ DÁRA, Thomas explains; “I see the work that I make as asking questions. What is the influence of traditional African art and contemporary African art on Western artists? What is the relationship between authorship and appropriation? How does mythology go both ways (because we see references to European mythology, like the dragon in certain elements of African art)? We see different proverbs that are related to globalisation, transnational trade, and technology in the Asafo, so is it traditional or is it modern? Where does performance fall into that? By adding a reference to sports jerseys, I’m asking what the link is to tribalism and to our military instincts as a species. The jerseys also speak to sports as an accelerator to global commerce, cultural hegemony, and migration. A lot of questions.”
